Building High Performing Teams from Scratch: The Most Important Things to Consider

Building teams is a crucial aspect of leadership and management roles. While expanding existing teams presents its own challenges, constructing teams from scratch poses unique difficulties. If you're expanding a team, it's essential to analyze the skills and professionals already present, identify current and future skill gaps based on your engineering strategy, and address these gaps. However, starting a team from scratch offers both opportunities and challenges, and I will share my experiences and perspectives on this topic.

Where to start?

When you're building a team from scratch, the common approach is to seek a technical guru who can serve as the Subject Matter Expert (SME) and quickly advance development. The urgency of hiring the first few team members and the need for immediate delivery often shifts the focus primarily to technical experience and knowledge necessary for domain and product development. Ideally, you should find someone who embodies both the desired culture and technical expertise, but this is challenging and time-consuming. Therefore, your job advertisements should emphasize both cultural and behavioral expectations alongside technical qualifications. Remember, your first hires will not only need to develop and deliver but also interview, onboard, and support subsequent hires. These foundational members are crucial, and selecting them wisely is imperative.

The risk of compromising on cultural fit with initial hires is significant and can have a profound impact. These individuals should help focus on recruiting the right team members. While technical knowledge and experience can be acquired through tasks, altering someone's mindset and behavior is difficult and often unjust. People develop their characters over a lifetime, not just for a job, so expecting them to change their fundamental mindset for their role is challenging and often unfair.

Finding the balance

The necessary seniority, experience, and skills in each team vary by company, domain, problem, and long-term objectives. If your plan includes expanding into multiple teams and building a department, hiring several more senior members who can later lead multiple teams is beneficial. However, having too many seniors in one team can lead to challenges, as these members may face difficulties in roles that require extensive coaching and mentoring. Conversely, starting with too many mid-level or junior engineers might leave gaps in experience. Ideally, begin with a balanced team of professionals who can support and develop each other, contributing to team dynamics. Professional motivation often stems not only from salary or the product but also from the team environment and opportunities for personal and professional growth.

Don’t underestimate diversity

Diversity is a critical component of a productive and healthy team. By diversity, I mean all of it: experience, skills, perspectives, and anything else that distinguishes individuals and can add value to the team. It's common to focus on a single aspect during hiring, but embracing a broad range of experiences and viewpoints can foster innovation, provoke meaningful discussions, and facilitate learning among team members, leading to optimal solutions. Avoid building a team with uniform strengths and weaknesses; such a team might excel in a specific task or area but lack the overall flexibility and adaptability needed for long-term business success. Teams are built to endure; diversity strengthens this endurance.